The Rio 2016 Olympic Games is in full swing and has already created some incredible moments for athletes and fans alike. A number of the headlines leading up to the event and now that is has started have concerned the architecture of the buildings used for the games. The park itself splits opinion but one structure that has earned a great deal of praise is the handball arena.

The 12,000 seat building was specially designed to create an arena for handball games. It has a beautiful timber clad exterior, giving the whole building a natural look. The structure is made of concrete and steel framework, meaning that it has a small carbon footprint. All of the materials can be recycled in the future rather than finding their way to landfill.

The greatest thing about the arena is the fact that it has been designed so that sections of the building can be utilised after the Games to create new buildings. These are earmarked for use in four state schools, with each section being able to accommodate approximately 500 pupils once the work is done. The building will therefore have a lasting legacy.

The same idea arose with the Beatbox pavilion at the London 2012 Olympics. Sadly after the event the cost of dismantling the structure so it could be used to create a recycled canopy for a school proved to be too high to make the project viable. Fortunately the handball arena at the Rio Games was designed to be dismantled from the very beginning, factoring in the cost. It is also a much larger scale.

At Coffey Architects we have a passion for temporary architecture, especially when the buildings can be used in the future for such great purposes. We appreciate these ideas because they promote better design and green building solutions, both of which are important to us.

If you are looking for an architect in London with passion and the ability to create the perfect design to suit your criteria please consider us.